I am flawed if I'm not free

macaniff@gmail.com — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:01:38 GMT

Yeah I was never satisfied with the state of things and I always thought we'd come to a crossroads and raise the X banner yaaay. Except here is, projecting from the past, the best crossroads of this 30 year cycle, and the embryonic right and left revolutions are both are arranging their ideology to be like "okay there's this class of people well-raised by the upper middle class in cities and nice suburbs, told its the best by merit and then cycled through the Ivy League and vaguely predestined libertarian economics on to the heights of media, government, and money: destroy them"

Hm.

Oh well I guess reaction is like a well-catered revolution. Jeunesse dorée 4eva.

(and its not like i wouldn't win either revolution if you threw it)

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:02:03 GMT

I think the generation maybe 1/2 behind us has better potential of being the important one. I could dig being an elder to them.

macaniff@gmail.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:35:35 GMT

Hey famous guy. I did it first.

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:36:16 GMT

So I think I have athlete's foot, for the first time in my life.* Both on the right foot and around the nails of both hands. It's obviously from karate; I don't know if it started on the hands by way of me using these increasingly sweaty and stiff and strangely oxidation-green-stained leather gloves I don't know how to wash or on the feet by way of me wrestling and opening up huge friction burns on my feet on the sweaty dojo mats.

Oh on Friday I learned wrestling and grappling for the first time. Sensei, the higher belts, and the guys who'd been wrestling before all say I seem to have an affinity. It's nice because my whole life I've been trying to trip people and it hasn't worked at all; sensei was like "o do this" and it was like slide-wham, slide-wham, "oh". Also I was getting submissions from the 230 pound guys without giving one up, and sensei taught us this way to get an amazingly powerful choke using your shoulders. Also I threw the (18 year old, maybe 110 lbs) girl I had been flirting with so hard she cried for like 8 minutes, that was the less cool part of the day. Being an only child means I never learned to fight below 100%.

Then later there were zombies, and I woke up at 6:30 am on like an hour and a half of sleep to bother crazy homeless people until I found the one with Brad's phone.

* Which is strange, given how my skin is totally my weak point. I've been learning lately, tho, that between ammonia disinfecting and uric acid softening the keratin, most of these petty skin problems will go away with a good soak in piss.

macaniff@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:27:46 GMT

Isn't it also weird that in America, class is supplanting race as master status at the same time that Europe, the model of how this is done "right", it's going the other way?

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:44:02 GMT

Isn't it weird that we treat Morgan Freeman as at least a B-list star when he's really a character actor who pushes his range less than Samuel L. Jackson?

Bonus dork

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:27:39 GMT

So when I was taught it was just taken as given that wages were sticky. They used that to explain other things, like THIS would go like THIS, but WAGES ARE STICKY, so instead it goes like THIS. So now it seems wages aren't sticky. That wasn't a general case, but a special case spanning horizon to horizon. So what ARE the boundaries and dynamics of wage stickiness?

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:04:17 GMT

So I've kept going to the dojo (it's going great, thanks for asking) long enough that I saw a need to get some new, really really basic sporting supplies - a gym bag, a gym towel, and new workout pants. Now it's worth noting that in each case, the "gym" or "workout" here means "kinda flimsy and unfashionable, using unprestigious fibers". And where could I find all these things with a minimum of effort? Why, in some sort of sports-oriented retail outlet, I concluded!

So I went to the Glendale mall, and eventually realized that it didn't even have a sports store. "Eventually" because I was initially misled by several sporting-style-culture stores. The kind of place where you could buy team hats and jerseys and basketball shoes and even casualwear for "ballers", but not an actual basketball.

As an aside, visits to a mall always either reinvigorate or completely destroy my faith in humanity, and I can't predict which in advance. This one was destroy.

So I gave up, and on a recommendation went up to Burbank today to their Sports Authority, which is located in a kind of supersize strip mall where every store is a big box, and you obviously drive from one store to another.

As another aside, these sort of centers - witness the very fact that I go to a category killer to find something that I couldn't in the mall - have really come up in the last two decades as the endpoint synthesis of the 20th century retail dialectic, the thesis being the department-cum-anchor store, and the antithesis being the chain boutiques that rose up to fill the space between them.

Okay, Sports Authority had basketballs, and all sorts of equipment. I spied a cup and mouthguard and some surprisingly cheap punching bags I might want to get at some point in the future. It even had gym bags and pants. But the thing is where it came to these latter things, the store was a sports-style-culture store for people who actually did sports, and these things were ridiculously expensive and strongly branded. Like, $35 each for the bag and a pair of pants, more if I wanted the top-of-the-line Nike or UnderArmor models. And like I said, when I was looking for sports gear, the "sports" meant cheap and basic. The new technology advertised on the tags meant nothing to me. I had long been doing ok with a bag and pants from around 1999, which were not much different from what you could get in 1989. (Before that, I yield, synthetic fibers weren't quite up to the task.)

Eventually I got everything I wanted in Target, plus a new butter dish and laundry hamper.

One of the nice things about not going to school anymore is people don't demand that your stories and arguments resolve themselves by the conclusion.

pluperfectionist

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:57:06 GMT

IMG_0111
Originally uploaded by kanemacaniff

As requested:

In my defense, I(DID YOU KNOW that I totally believe in the western media model of beauty [I remember this one time in like I think 9th grade gifted science class Kaitlin Mallouk's dad, who was maybe a doctor or something credentialed had come in and spoke against unhealthy female body images and when Q&A came I asked if maybe this was the price we pay for a beautiful culture and he {the way smart adults often did with me where they saw my potential but thought I was a level behind them when I was in fact an odd number ahead} talked directly to me on and through the bell on how these ideals were a construct of our modern consumeristic media-driven culture and I thought duh yes, but that consumeristic, media-saturated culture is precisely the culture I was raised in and now live, and what the fuck culture did you come from?] and it's only in the last three or so months in my adult life that I've considered myself possibly attractive?)'ve lost another critical 5 or 8 pounds since then.

In my offense, I left that shirt in Hawaii because I went down to the hot tub, took it off, and then got too drunk to remember it when I left.

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:31:23 GMT

I've definitely seen more white girls with babies in the last 2 years than I saw white girls with pregnancy in the last 1-3rd year.

How did that work?

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:01:44 GMT

E=mc^2.

Maybe we were once supposed to understand it.

As recently as the mid-'90s we were expected to recognize it.

I just realized I haven't encountered it in a decade.

Am I just not in classrooms anymore, or did we lose it?

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:24:23 GMT

So I saw Inglourious Basterds a while ago. I wasn't sure what I thought of it, and I still don't have a singular judgement, but I think it's actually the first movie I want to see twice for critical purposes. (The first movie I wanted to see twice for the hell of it was Waterworld, which I prefer to the Mad Max movies, which were all '70s-brooding and slow.)

Principally, I find the inversions intriguing. The way how, counter to the typical WWII movie in which the Germans are all indistinguishable and the Americans are a collection of distinct (arche)types, this one gives us a variety of Germans (with recognizably different accents! to each other, at least) and a squad entirely composed of streetwise Brooklyn kids. Or how none of the Germans are shown to have any particular malice towards Jews as Jews, but all the Jews hate Germans as Germans.

Ultimately it makes you realize... isn't it a little weird that we've commemorated the Nazis by designating them as caricatured vermin that can be killed at will and en masse without compunction, so as to better serve our own culture's narratives? (Or alternately, isn't that perfectly normal and isn't it weird how we pretend to treat that "never again" sentiment as some sort of universalism against all genocides rather than a promise to make sure our team never loses theirs?)

I am Gaius Baltar

macaniff@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:02:30 GMT

'strue. One by one by two by eks.

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:43:56 GMT

Weakness < strength < skill < tactics < strategy < logistics < politics.

macaniff@gmail.com — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:56:26 GMT

A martial arts, um, dojo, I guess is the word, opened up in a storefront on Sunset in the middle of Echo Park and I've started going. American Kenpo, with boxing and brazilan jiujitsu touches. It's run on a yoga schedule: a class every day, you can pay per class, or per week or greater time unit for unlimited classes. It exhausts me, which is kind of the point.

Hourlong, the first half of the class is just solid exercise - major muscle groups to the point of exhaustion, and your recovery time is spent exhausting another one. I've been getting to the point where I can do 10 push-ups in one set, if it's the only exercise I've done that day. The sensei has us doing 3 or 4 sets of 25 in the course of 15 minutes. I'm not keeping up, but I'm pushing, and the sensei's good at tracking a bunch of people and inspiring/challenging to their limit, which is the whole thing about physical training. By pushing you to the point of exhaustion and not just unpleasantness, having a guide makes you do more reps per set or whatever, for an exponential increase in effectiveness (as the more you do the more you'll be able to do next time).

Then some techniques, some of which have official and kinda purple titles, but tend to get presented more as "here's a way to hurt a guy who's grabbing you", or "here's a way to block and counter an overhand knife slash", or "here's a way to block a kick and open up a throw".

Then, after we're totally exhausted, we put on gloves and do 5 or so rounds of sparring. This is fun, and I'm definitely doing better in the few sessions I've been going - I'm putting in good showings with the other white belts and some of the yellows, though even the ones my age I tend to have reach on. The higher belts could absolutely wreck me, but I learn stuff from them - at first they were just kinda teaching me to block, and now they're teaching me how that's not enough, how they can do attacks where my blocks just open me up worse. So I'm focusing more on how to not just keep blows from landing, but do it in a way that throws off their balance or rhythm, and keeping constantly conscious of the position of my body and limbs relative to their body and limbs.

So: fun times.

macaniff@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:27:29 GMT

So one interesting thing about all the Michael Jackson retrospectives is that all the old pictures bring to mind that he used to have an afro. He iconically had an afro, even.

Which, I mean, yeah obviously, but just try imagining him with that hair in his '80s-'90s period.

No, seriously, go ahead and try it!

(!!!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, your New York Times

macaniff@gmail.com — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:53:45 GMT

(Magazine)

The Issue

The singer Miley Cyrus, beloved by tweens, announced that her tour through 45 cities this fall will go paperless to thwart scalpers, making hers the first major tour to take this step. Ticketmaster, the company handling sales, will offer only e-tickets and deploy other innovative antiscalping technologies at each venue. But isn’t scalping harmless, even beneficial — the very essence of American capitalism?

The Argument

No. Cyrus is a teenage Joan of Arc (as was Joan of Arc, of course[).]

macaniff@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:37:05 GMT

Been watching some movies from the early '80s recently. It's like wow, we used to take the working class seriously.

Also, I guess newfound respect to aerobics and especially the girls' sports movement; even the "slim" girl characters back then had like 0 tone.

Thanks for digital cameras for bringing us the rest of the way though, srsly.

macaniff@gmail.com — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:44:17 GMT

So there was another script I'd been writing for a while. It was a pilot. About the age of Caribbean colonialism in a world where all gods were real. It's done. Begins with two brothers, one of whom wants to become a pirate and one of whom who doesn't; it ends with steampunk freemasons fighting zombie redcoats. I'm trying to get it around and kick my career off from here. If not, oh man, have I wasted my youth.

I have insecurities. They're exactly what you'd expect.

How to dominate an animal

macaniff@gmail.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:32:30 GMT

(What I've learned. This only works for mammalian meat-eaters, afaik)

1) Look them straight in the eye. If they shift gaze, follow them.

2) Mirror them back at themselves, while maintaining complete confidence in your own superiority.

(humans are mammalian meat-eaters)

Fundamentals

macaniff@gmail.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:14:35 GMT

Have you noticed that ads everywhere - TV, radio, internet - have been getting more sketchy? The NY Times is running Dianetics ads. This is one of the mechanisms by which marginal ideologies gain ground when things fall apart - it becomes viable to promote things that do not immediately translate into revenue.

Have you noticed sales, in the stores? I passed by a PacSun, and they were offering 60-70% off, plus 2 for 1 deals, plus a $20 gift card for purchases of over $40. Here's a sekret: it's a liquidation without the sign. They aren't expecting to be around by the time you think to redeem the card.

Fundamentals!

So what do you do about this? Invest in primary inputs. Raw materials. Not in developed countries, they're going to eventually grab whatever they can to try to hold themselves up. Invest in the countries that extract from Africa, that own their own mercenary militaries. If you can, rent a warehouse, buy and fill it with MREs, don't tell anyone else.

I'm not shitting you.

Fundamentals!

Things I've noticed about Hawaii

macaniff@gmail.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:27:58 GMT

A lot of road repair, and a hell of a lot of people and equipment per section of road repair. Especially given that the roads aren't remotely broken to begin with. I guess that's what happens when your state doesn't have many highways but still has two senators.

To expand on that, the whole economy seems to be based on construction, and a lot of it seems like it doesn't make economic sense to run so much as it made economic sense to build. Even the resorts, and various tourist activities, seem to make a big chunk of their money on gathering a captive audience and pitching them timeshares.

Hella interracial couples. And I don't mean the locals, who at 20% mixed race are the most miscegenatastic in America, but the tourists. Lots of them, even (especially) ones whose clothing marks them as not among the cool. Including a few combinations I don't remember seeing before, like asian man/black woman, or hispanic man/asian woman. And by "black" I mean black, not the few mulatta-to-octaroons we quietly feel proud about in hipster LA.

macaniff@gmail.com — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:37:31 GMT

"Recovery". Ha. "Green shoots". Ha. Seriously, have you been paying attention? Do you know what to pay attention to? Fundamentals. We have like 4 apocalypses stacked in a holding pattern right now. This is going to be one of those times that flags and borders change. Before this is out, we are going to have famines in places you didn't think could have famines.

macaniff@gmail.com — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:54:54 GMT

So one thing about here is that everybody uses local words in a few cases - "keiki" in place of "kids", "mahalo" in place of "thank you", "aloha" whenever it fits. For a while I was wondering whether this was actual culture or just a schtick everyone agreed to pull, but heck, actual culture is a schtick everyone agrees to pull.

One interesting angle of this is that the local word for "women" is "wahine", and "men" is "kane". Which means that everywhere I go, the bathrooms have cute signs with my name on them. We've been trying to get one of these because it would be the perfect souvenir, but the problem is that none of the souvenir shops actually sells them, because who wants a bathroom sign? Similarly, my mom can't find any souvenir nameplates in these shops because they're all like "if this is your real name, this would be your Hawaiian name", and her name - Lani - is actually Hawaiian to begin with.

macaniff@gmail.com — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:00:37 GMT

On Maui with my folks, celebrating my mom not having cancer anymore.

Stereotypes confirmed:

• American tourists? Fat and ugly.
• Japanese tourists? Love their cameras.
• Samoans? Built like refrigerators.
• Tour guides? Living the parrothead dream.

Oh also: something I didn't notice about LA until I saw the contrast here: I can't remember the last time I saw a pregnant white twentysomething.